I think a lot of people misread intent. No one is policing your conversations in your living room, but if you’re an author (of any medium of art) your work necessarily interfaces with an audience (arguably you can create art without anyone else ever seeing it, let’s take that as read) — if you’re attempting to communicate with an audience its naive to think they won’t have opinions on it, or that it can’t be improved.

I like to imagine if you said this to James Joyce, or Georges Perec, Marcel Proust, William Shakespeare, Truman Capote, Samuel Beckett (or other authors known for being exacting) … They could get pissy about it sure, but they could also say “What an excellent point, I could be way more specific, accurate and poetic in my prose.”

While you are absolutely entitled to your opinion, do you not think it’s a fruitful line of enquiry in terms of literary criticism and dramaturgy, similar to how using “nice” as every adjective is considered unimaginative?

But then what would they superciliously lecture you on to feel like they made a difference from their tiny insignificant corner of the world?

I recall John Barnes, an English footballer, having a hissy fit because some sports broadcaster had referred to a stadium crush as ‘a black day for football’. John Barnes said it was yet another example of a racist connotation of the word. Nope, John, it’s just another meaning, you word hogger.

Stop calling that thing in your window a blind you sightist, that’s a telescoping sun repeller

Blind fury. Blind to someone’s faults, blinded by love. Poker blinds. Types of medical trials. Venetian blinds.

Getting angry at other well-established uses of words seems like fun.

How can you be blind to this common practice?